Friday, February 6, 2009

TAKSONOMI SOLO

SOLO taxonomy

The SOLO taxonomy stands for:Structure ofObservedLearningOutcomes

It was developed by Biggs and Collis (1982), and is well described in Biggs (1999)It describes level of increasing complexity in a student's understanding of a subject, through five stages, and it is claimed to be applicable to any subject area. Not all students get through all five stages, of course, and indeed not all teaching (and even less "training" is designed to take them all the way).There are fairly clear links not only with Säljö on conceptions of learning, but also, in the emphasis on making connections and contextualising, with Bateson's levels of learning, and even with Bloom's taxonomy in the cognitive domain. Like my pyramidal representation of Bloom, the assumption is that each level embraces previous levels, but adds something more:

1 Pre-structural: here students are simply acquiring bits of unconnected information, which have no organisation and make no sense.

2 Unistructural: simple and obvious connections are made, but their significance is not grasped.

3 Multistructural: a number of connections may be made, but the meta-connections between them are missed, as is their significance for the whole.

4 Relational level: the student is now able to appreciate the significance of the parts in relation to the whole.

5 At the extended abstract level, the student is making connections not only within the given subject area, but also beyond it, able to generalise and transfer the principles and ideas underlying the specific instance.